The Regiment by Christopher Nicole

Author:Christopher Nicole [Nicole, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Media
Published: 2014-08-27T04:00:00+00:00

9 – Somalia, 1907

Four companies of the Lancashires, as well as the artillery, were left in garrison; supported by the paramilitary police force, they composed something like a thousand men, sufficient to hold Berbera should the Mullah attempt to come in behind the brigade—although that was something he had never yet attempted.

Murdoch felt it was a mistake to leave the artillery, and said so, but the brigadier pointed out that shelling made very little impression on desert wadis, and besides, it had never been taken before on account of the difficulty of moving the guns across such country. ‘It is your chaps who are going to do the damage,’ he announced.

Murdoch hoped he was right. The brigadier had obviously built all his plans upon the coming of the squadron. Murdoch had no objection to being used as bait—as he had said, he was flattered, and so were his men—he was not at all sure it was a trap into which the Mullah, however mad, would fall. However, the brigade made an imposing spectacle as it moved out of its cantonment. There were eight companies of the King’s African Rifles, tall, imposing black men, who wore red fezzes, although the rest of their uniform was khaki, and equally incongruous, bare feet, although they wore regulation puttees; Halstead claimed they could travel very nearly as fast, across the roughest country as mounted infantry.

‘But the rebels will see those fezzes coming for miles,’ Murdoch suggested.

Halstead merely shrugged. ‘Fortunately, the Mullah’s people don’t shoot very straight.’

Then there were three companies of the Lancashires, who were mounted on mules, the usual hospital wagon and his squadron of cavalry, which undertook the advance guard duties—at least so far as the casual observer could detect.

Murdoch in fact thoroughly enjoyed his role of appearing so enthusiastic that he gradually pulled ahead of the main body. He suspected it might have been suggested to Brigadier-General Hardie by those who had studied his South African record.

He followed the South African principle of alternating each troop each day; he himself always rode with the forward party. Unfortunately, he still found the pace of the advance painfully slow, as he had to maintain contact with the brigade; it was going to take some determined prodding and baiting to make the Mullah accept battle.

‘Some bloody country,’ Tom Knox remarked, as they walked their horses over the sandy soil. Hardly a tree was to be seen save for an occasional thorny acacia, but the apparently flat surface was actually a mass of shallow ravines and wadis, any one of which could have concealed a hundred armed men. Luckily, the Somalis were not actually attempting to defend their country against the British—as the Boers had been—so much as trying to stir up a large-scale revolt against the foreigners, and there was no evidence of any ambush. However, there were enemies enough in the snakes and scorpions which were invisible until one actually stepped on them; they could do little damage to stout boots, but were

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